Topic Summaries

Behavioural approach

A-Level > Psychology > AQA > A-Level Psychology Topic Summaries > Clinical psychology and mental health > Behavioural approach
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Addiction

  • The behavioural approach to explaining phobias:
    • Phobias are created through classical conditioning and maintained through operant conditioning.
    • Avoidance behaviour is negatively reinforced – when they avoid the fear-evoking stimulus they are reinforcing their fear through a lack of exposure.
    • 👥 Watson and Rayner’s (1920) Little Albert experiment created association in a small child by showing him a white rat (neutral stimulus) and making a loud bang (unconditioned stimulus), which caused fear (unconditioned response), and repeating it several times. The subject then created an association between the rat (now conditioned stimulus), and the loud bang by showing fear (now conditioned response).
      • Face validity: the Little Albert explanation works at face value to explain why people create and retain phobias. It makes sense to us that avoiding a phobic stimulus would reinforce the phobia rather than solve it.
      • Ethical implications: this experiment caused long lasting psychological harm to a young child which violates ethical standards.
  • The behavioural approach to treating phobias:
    • Systematic desensitisation: aims to treat phobias through gradual expose to the phobic stimulus. It uses the idea of counterconditioning to rewire the patient’s brain. The patient and therapist create an anxiety hierarchy which ranks events that would cause anxiety involving the phobic stimulus. Then, the patient is taught relaxation techniques to help ease their anxiety when exposed to the stimulus. The phobia is believed to be cured when a person can reach the highest level (e.g.leaving the house for an agoraphobic person), and can effectively calm themselves down.
      • Systematic desensitisation is more suitable for those with learning disabilities: flooding may be too overwhelming for neurodiverse people or people with disabilities, whereas working through a phobia step-by-step can be more logical and effective.
      • Lowered attrition rates: since it is seen as more effective, people are more likely to succeed with this therapy and not require ongoing treatment.
    • Flooding: an alternate technique to systematic desensitisation that immerses the patient in their phobia and ‘floods’ their senses with it (e.g.placing someone with arachnophobia in a room full of spiders for a prolonged period of time). This creates high levels of anxiety, but after the anxiety reaches its peak, it will decrease. By doing this, the patient learns that the phobic stimulus is harmless.
      • Cost effective and quick: it takes a shorter amount of planning and time to complete than systematic desensitisation.
      • May not work for complex phobias: cognitive therapy may be more effective for those with social phobias as they are believed to be more complex.

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